Vayigash D'var Torah: Delivered by Rachel Berkowitz, December 26th

Good shabbos. It is so good to be here.

Some of you might know that for most of the last month and a half, I was in Ithaca, NY, caring for my mother, who was unexpectedly ill. In addition to some underlying medical issues, she developed progressive muscle weakness that stumped her doctors, and led her to require assistance with most daily tasks. I left Boston for what I thought might be a few days or a week, and it turned into 5 weeks.

I am so grateful that my mom is doing much better now.

When I mentioned to her that I was giving this d’var Torah and some of the themes I was thinking about, she reflected, “We are all so multi-faceted. We show different sides of ourselves in different contexts, and some of those facets only come out under certain circumstances. As a caregiver, you explored new sides of yourself, and you also saw different sides of me.”

Our parsha this week, Vayigash, is part of the Joseph story. Joseph, second in command to Pharaoh and unrecognized by his brothers, has just framed his youngest brother Benjamin and accused him of stealing Joseph’s goblet. As punishment, Joseph threatens to take Benjamin as his slave. 

The parsha begins with Judah approaching Joseph to plead on Benjamin’s behalf, and offering himself as a slave instead of Benjamin. The midrash immediately has a lot to say about that very first word “vayigash”, which is also the name of the parsha. It means “he approached”. The rabbis want to know how Judah, a shepherd and a foreigner, approaches the second most powerful man in Egypt, who he describes as “equal to Pharaoh”. According to the midrash, there are three interpretations. 

• Rabbi Yehuda says that “approach” means “an approach for war”, the way an army advances in battle. 

• Rabbi Neḥemya says: “An approach for conciliation”; that Judah prepares to appease Joseph. 

• The third option, according to the Rabbis is: “An approach for prayer”, and they compare it to way Elijah approached God.

The midrash goes on to say:

"Rabbi Elazar resolved it in accordance with all of them: 

אִם לְמִלְחָמָה אֲנִי בָא, אִם לְפִיּוּס אֲנִי בָא, אִם לִתְפִלָּה אֲנִי בָא

If for war, I am coming; if for appeasement, I am coming, if for prayer, I am coming." 

Judah is prepared for all three possibilities.

When I read this, I couldn’t help but think of how I was required to show up for my mom over the past month and a half. The first few weeks I was in Ithaca, my mom and I existed in a state of tremendous uncertainty. We didn’t know what to expect, whether it was possible for her strength to improve or whether it would plateau or continue to decline. We had no idea even what immediate future we were planning for. And yet somehow, like Judah, I had to show up anyway, and to be ready for various outcomes, even when I didn’t know what was going to be asked of me.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the roles that we play in our families and what parts of ourselves we show to different people and in different circumstances. In the moment that Judah steps up to offer himself as a slave in place of Benjamin, Joseph sees a side of his brother — the same brother who sold him into captivity — that he has never seen before. He sees him jumping in to defend, and even to fight for, or else be enslaved in place of, Benjamin, who is now his father’s favorite son.

And according to the Torah, this is when Joseph, whose identity was a secret until now, breaks down and becomes so emotional that he “can’t control himself” and reveals himself to his brothers, while sobbing so loudly that the Egyptians overheard.

In her own d’var Torah on this parsha, Rav Aviva Richman, a teacher of mine from Yeshivat Hadar, quotes the same midrash I mentioned before, and points out the absurdity of the idea that Judah would prepare to go to war against Pharaoh’s viceroy. She says:

"When Bereishit Rabbah relates Yehudah’s initial stance of aggression, it closes by pointing out how Yehudah’s words were meant to appease Yosef, his brothers, and Binyamin all at once. Not only his supplication, but perhaps also Yehudah’s anger and passion—and his willingness to defend Binyamin even by force—may be exactly what Yosef needs to hear to be reassured of a change of heart. In this entirely irrational fantasy of Yehudah going to war with all of Egypt to save his brother, Yosef might hear echoes of a different unarticulated fantasy:

Yehudah wishing he could do whatever it would take to get his other brother, Yosef, back."

Rav Tali Adler, once a student and now a colleague of Rav Aviva, has another take on why this moment is the moment that Joseph’s facade cracks. She argues that until now, the brothers have been lying to themselves and to Joseph. She says:

"For so long, the brothers have been committed to a‬ lie, the vision of their family as they wished it was, in which their father loved all of them, in‬ which there was no favorite…the‬ family they tried desperately to create the day they sold Yosef.

"…Only now in Parashat VaYigash, in their final encounter with Yosef, after he has accused‬ Binyamin of stealing, do the brothers change their narrative to one that more fully reflects‬‭ their complicated, painful reality. Yehudah explains:

 יֶשׁ־לָ֙נוּ֙ אָ֣ב זָקֵ֔ן, וְיֶ֥לֶד זְקֻנִ֖ים קָטָ֑ן, וְאָחִ֣יו מֵ֔ת וַיִּוָּתֵ֨ר ה֧וּא לְבַדּ֛וֹ לְאִמּ֖וֹ, וְאָבִ֥יו אֲהֵבֽוֹ׃

“We have an old father, and a young son of his old age, but his brother died and he alone is‬‭ left of his mother, and his father loves him.” - Genesis 44:20"

Some context here: you might remember that of Jacob’s 12 sons and one daughter, Joseph and Benjamin were the only children born to Rachel, Jacob’s favorite of his four wives. Rav Tali points out that a few verses later in our parsha, Judah quotes his own father as saying  אַתֶּ֣ם יְדַעְתֶּ֔ם כִּ֥י שְׁנַ֖יִם יָֽלְדָה־לִּ֥י אִשְׁתִּֽי - “you know that my wife bore me two sons”. The medieval Jewish scholar the Ramban, says that in using the language “my wife”, and completely ignoring his other wives and their children, Jacob is saying “the wife I chose had only two sons, and I have bestowed my love upon them as if they were my only ones.” Rav Tali suggests that Judah, in quoting his father Jacob here, finally tells the truth about his complicated family dynamics.

So I wonder if perhaps it is a combination of both - Joseph’s seeing a new side of his brother, and also Judah acknowledging the painful truth of Rachel and her sons’ favored place in the family, that allows the brothers to reunite.

Rav Tali also has an idea about how Joseph re-interprets his childhood dreams (you know, the ones of all his brothers and parents bowing down to him, that made his brothers so jealous that they sold him into slavery). Initially, she says, Joseph thought the dreams were about power, about being the center of his family. Now, he realizes that being powerful means responsibility, that it is his job to provide for others and to lead all of Egypt safely through a famine.

I don’t know what it’s like to have twelve siblings. But I am an only child, and I was born a very tiny preemie and am lucky to have made it, so maybe I do know a little about what it means to be the favorite and to be considered special. And now, like Joseph, I am learning the ways that it also means responsibility.

On both a personal and political level, the world feels pretty overwhelming and scary these days, and the future feels more unknown than ever. And yet, when I was with my mom, it was usually clear what one thing I needed to do next: wash the dishes, drive to the doctor’s appointment, fetch whatever thing she needed and couldn’t get herself.

Even when faced with deep uncertainty or fear or existential angst, may we all have the courage to stand up and approach - vagiyash - whatever role is needed of each of us in this moment. 

Shabbat Shalom.